


Square One

by dessert_first



Series: And Baby Makes Four [2]
Category: due South
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:31:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dessert_first/pseuds/dessert_first
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you one day found yourself in a functional, happy, committed three-way relationship with a Mountie and a cop... well, Ray's not really clear on how the whole thing started, is all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Square One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seramirez (boxofdelights)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxofdelights/gifts).



It all starts with a trip to Canada.

No.

It all starts with a trip back from Canada, after a long, arduous and freaking freezing trek to find the Hand of Franklin in the furthest, coldest, most rugged corners of the entire country.

It all starts with an amazing adventure, sadly G-rated--or maybe PG-13 for language and questions about the likelyhood of certain body parts freezing off--through the secret heart of Canada, with the most amazing man Ray Kowalski had ever met in his life, a pack of sled dogs, and a paralyzing fear of rejection coming up against a chronic fear of abandonment in an epic battle of unspoken emotional issues.

It all starts the day Stanley Raymond Kowalski met Stella Jane DuBois at the age of twelve in his mother's ballroom dance class.

Wait, too far back.

It starts when Ray Kowalski, recently divorced, depressed and acting like the walking wounded with anger management issues, agrees to take a job with his old friend Lieutenant Harding Welsh of the 27th precinct of the Chicago PD, going undercover for an extended stint as Detective Ray Vecchio, a guy known for running around town with a wolf and a Mountie wearing bright red serge.

"No offense," Welsh had said. "But a white guy is a white guy."

"Right," Ray had replied, staring at the picture of the real Vecchio, with his dark hair, olive complexion, green eyes, prominent nose and receding hairline.

"You just stick to the Mountie and the wolf, keep calling yourself Vecchio and nobody will think twice."

Hey, Ray had done stranger gigs. One time he went undercover as a red-haired assassin with Russian ties and a sexy accent. Getting in and out of the catsuit had been pure hell, but Ray likes to think he made the look work, and he nailed the perps so it all worked out in the end.

Anyway, the job with Welsh got him out of being Ray Kowalski for a while, which sounded perfect, because being Ray Kowalski currently sucked like you would not believe.

So on the gig, working undercover doing pretty much what Ray did while not undercover at his old precinct, he first laid eyes on Benton Fraser, RCMP, and his immediate, dignified and completely work-appropriate reaction was to give the guy a great big hug. Ray was proud of his restraint, because the kiss he'd envisioned would have been weird.

No, he hadn't envisioned a kiss. He'd just met the guy, whatever.

Yes, he totally had. The guy was hot, okay? Ray had just gotten divorced, did he mention that sucked? And he hadn't gotten laid in--okay, he'd gotten laid like four days ago because he and Stella had had chemistry since before puberty and apparently kind of imprinted on each other or something, and it was possible post-divorce sex was even hotter than regular sex, which had already been plenty hot, possibly due to the imprinting. But it got old doing the walk of shame home from his own damn apartment he no longer lived in, after yet another morning of recriminations (Stella's), begging (Ray's) and guilt (both).

Divorce. Sucked. Ray was never doing that again. He wouldn't be doing it now, if he had the choice.

Anyway. There was something about the Mountie that Ray fell for, hard and fast, and people--some people, people who did not know what they were talking about--might think it was a rebound thing, but Ray wasn't a rebound kind of guy. He was, for better or (currently) worse, the kind of guy who fell for someone irrevocably, laid his heart on a platter, and never, ever, ever voluntarily let things go. Pride, and inversely, shame, were fairly abstract concepts that his brother Roy would sometimes (frequently) point out as relevant to Ray's situation, but Ray remained unconvinced. It was possible Ray had neither of those qualities. He was okay with that.

So, there was a thing with Stella, Ray had a thing, and now he'd met Fraser and he had two things, and neither of those things seemed to be reciprocated, so he just sort of flailed his way along life, trying to get by, do his job, be a good friend, be a good cop.

Eventually the undercover gig was over and Ray thought that was sayonara for him, but Fraser ended up asking him along on an adventure. The one Ray just mentioned, with the amazing and the freezing cold and the very understandable concerns about possible loss of valued body parts due to frostbite where no frost should ever be.

It was hard to be sexy when wrapped up in fifty layers of insulation and no access to showers or hair care products. Ray knew to play to his strengths, and he was frankly at a loss without them. There were no clubs in the wilderness for him to entincingly shake his groove thing, no concerts to facilitate the wearing of smokey eyeliner and trashy clothes, no earthly possibility of sensually removing clothing at critical junctures--he could barely work his buttons and zippers at the best of times on this adventure due to a combination of cold and mittens.

Which left words, which were not Ray's forte.

He tried, stumblingly, to make his case, but Fraser clamped down like the librarian's grandson that he was--hey, Fraser in hot librarian glasses, not that Ray objectified him, but hot was hot--whenever talk turned to a serious interpersonal nature. He did the verbal equivalent of fleeing in horror, in nicest, heartiest, most polite way possible every time Ray even got close to confessing his emotions. And Ray had a lot of emotions to confess, he had emotions outweighing the literal baggage strapped to their sled, he was _made_ of emotions. Emotions and experimental hair.

Eventually, the adventure ended. They never found the hand, but Ray took some pictures of Fraser's hand sticking out of a pile of snow despite his protests, just to have something to show the guys back home at the precinct.

Fraser took Ray to a little airport in a little backwater town, strapped him into a seat on an alarmingly small and rickety airplane, and bade him goodbye with a hearty tone and a hollow gaze he seemed absolutely determined to ignore.

And that was the hardest part of leaving--not leaving itself, which by and large Ray was okay with, geographically speaking. Not putting aside the last of his hopes that Fraser might return his affections, which hurt like hell but felt an almost familiar kind of inevitable. 

The hardest part of leaving was thinking that, just possibly, Fraser might not want him to.

Ray isn't sure how he managed to get from point Z to point Chicago and all the points in between while nursing heartache that felt like lungache because he couldn't breathe, and bodyache because he could barely move, and stomachache because he didn't want to eat, although he did because Ray was, if nothing else, resilient. Ray was a survivor. Ray got by.

Stella picked him up at the airport.

"Oh, Ray," she said when she saw him.

She took him home and fucked him, because that was what they did and nobody ever said their relationship was healthy. Afterwards, they lay in bed for a long while and she smoothed his hair, rubbed his back like she would when he was sick. 

"I'm moving to Florida," she said. "I think it's a midlife crisis."

"What?" Ray started awake, forcibly ejected out of the afterglow. "You're thirty-four, you're having a midlife crisis?!"

"I'm not," she said calmly. "Mondo is. I've been thinking about it a lot; we've been sort of on-again, off-again for a while."

"And what are you now?" Ray had to ask.

"Off," she shrugged. "Give me a _little_ credit."

"So why Florida?"

"I think I'm ready to be on again. Give it a real shot. Prove to myself I am capable of having a functional, adult relationship with someone I haven't been tied to since childhood."

"So this was goodbye?" Ray asked.

"No," Stella kissed his forehead, smoothed back his hair. "This was 'you needed me'."

He kissed her back, and then they fucked again, and this time it was goodbye, for now. Ray kinda thought they were stuck with each other for life, one way or another, and he was okay with that. 

So Stella moved to Florida with Ray "Mondo" Vecchio, which Ray wasn't even going to think about. Ray went back to work at the 27th precinct because at least Welsh was there and he couldn't quite decide if it was better or worse to hang out in all the places Fraser used to be. Elaine joined the precinct as a cop, and she was as practical, intelligent and efficient as ever, only now all of those skills were focused solely on being a police officer and she was _awesome_ at it. 

Ray talked to Stella regularly, and to Fraser as much as he could what with limited access to phones out in the wilderness where Fraser was now patrolling like he used to. They came to depend more on letters and postcards, and it was rough not to hear the nuances of Fraser's voice, to know what was behind the lines, but if that was all Ray could get, he would take it. 

And then one day, Elaine asks him out for a cup of coffee.


End file.
